Disclaimer: Sonic and co. © Sega

All types of Egglings © Blank the Nobody

Chapter Twenty One

In the Dark

6 Days and 3 Hours before Black Egg Armageddon

We've all been chasing Eggman around. Trying to tell what his plans are. Most of the time it was easy, but now we're lost. Lost in the dark.

The moon was shrouded with black clouds and the only thing left to illuminate the streets were the old street lights. The roads were the only path since all of the alleyways had no lights within them. A sudden breeze blew by, but this was no natural breeze. A black blur raced through the streets, causing dust and loose pieces of papers to wave around as the dark blur passed by. It ran by rapidly, leaving no trace that he was there as a low growling filled the air. The source, the creatures that roamed around at night.

Ever since Amy's discovery of the Avian Egglings, more varieties of Egglings started to sprout up. Day by day, the scientist kept on coming up with the same conclusion. The Egglings were evolving to suit war. Every new creature that joined the Eggling's rank seemed as if it were built specifically to do one job and the ordinary lower-level Egglings were becoming hard to find. Shadow had a mission that night, he was to meet up with a squadron of soldiers and retrieve some new intel they had on a new breed of Eggling that seemed to be preying on the people still living in Westopolis.

Shadow stopped at one corner, his back against the wall as he peered over the corner to see if there was anyone there. Most of the time he wouldn't be as stealthy, but he didn't want to be fighting any unwanted battles. The ebony hedgehog raced from one piece of cover to the next, being very cautious about what he was doing. After finally verifying that there was no one else watching him, Shadow just started to run in the middle of the streets once again, his destination close by.

He ran silently, his senses telling him where everything was as he ran. But then he sensed something. Shadow turned abruptly into an alleyway and he hid in the shadows, searching the street for anything. He could feel it somewhere around him, but he just couldn't see it. His crimson eyes searched and searched and still he couldn't find anything.

"My god, I'm right here you idiot." said a familiar voice in an unimpressed tone from above him.

The ebony hedgehog looked up and he could see that standing on the building's rooftop was Anubis. The jackal jumped down from his post and greeted Shadow with a smile. Shadow wasn't too happy to see the jackal and he had no idea why he was there in the first place.

"What are you doing here?" asked Shadow coldly as he shot the jackal a serious glare.

Anubis shrugged. "I'm here to help you." answered Anubis normally.

"But why." asked Shadow curiously.

"Because I want to." answered the jackal playfully as he shot the hedgehog a smirk.

Shadow was starting to get tired of Anubis's games and the ebony hedgehog began to run, with the jackal following close behind. After working with Anubis before, Shadow knew that asking the jackal why he did things would be a fruitless endeavor. Anubis was a wildcard, he either did something for a reason or he did something without a reason. When the two first met, the ebony hedgehog just thought of him as an evil, manipulating crook who did what we wanted. But after helping the Underground, Shadow came to realize that Anubis was actually a great leader and friend once you got past his personality. It was interesting when Shadow thought back to those days. Back then he was even colder and crueler, but after the experience with Anubis and his team, he learned some compassion, even if it was only a little.

He lead Anubis through the streets as he made sure that he kept a good pace so Anubis could keep up. As the two ran, Shadow could hear the jackal humming a familiar tune and the hedgehog restrained himself from humming along with the jackal. Seconds later they took a turn and were met with an empty outdoor marketplace. Some of the stores were illuminated with their lights, but they flickered on and off uncontrollably as electricity flickered through the fluorescent lights. There were no signs of life in the abandoned plaza and Shadow found that to be very intriguing.

"What's wrong?" asked Anubis as he glared at the darkness around him.

"The squad I'm supposed to meet with . . . we're supposed to meet here." whispered Shadow as he inspected the area around him.

Anubis raised an eyebrow at the answer. It wasn't surprising though, since everything else was going wrong in the world and Anubis wanted to see how things would play out. A loud scream filled the air and the two looked in the direction where it was coming from. The screaming continued as the sound of gunfire mixed in. Both of them ran toward the source as the gunfire continued to ring throughout the night time air. Once they got to the source, they found a soldier under a streetlamp's illumination firing his pistol into the dark.

"Get the fuck away! Get away!" yelled the bruised and bloody soldier as he continued to fire his pistol at the shadows.

Both of them stepped forward and before they could calm the soldier down, he aimed his pistol at them and fired repeatedly, thinking they were the enemy. Instead of jumping out of the bullet's way, Shadow stood still as Anubis unraveled his bandages and formed a shield around the two. The useless bullets dropped off the shield before the bandages that made up the shield unwound and wrapped around Anubis's wrists once more. Shadow then swatted the soldier's gun away and stared the soldier right in the eyes. Once the frightened soldier looked into Shadow's death glare, he calmed down instantly, afraid that Shadow would hurt him.

"What's going on, where's the rest of your squad?" asked Shadow coldly, as Anubis tossed the soldier his pistol.

The soldier caught the pistol with ease and looked at the ground, trying to find the right words to describe what had happened. He got to his feet, his body still twitchy and erratic since he was still scared. He looked around quickly, as if searching for something and the soldier looked at Shadow once again.

"My squad got here early and we decided to wait." he began, his voice starting to waver. "A couple minutes later, we started to notice that we were slowly starting to decrease in number."

Shadow and Anubis looked at each other, a curious look on both of their faces. The ebony hedgehog then turned back to face the soldier. "What do you mean?" asked the hedgehog.

"We were just standing around, chatting and hanging out while we waited for you and we were starting to get picked off!" said the soldier frantically as he walked around, gripping his head. "One by one, we just started to disappear and by the time we knew it, we were too late!" the soldier turned around, a scared look on the soldier's face. "I saw what happened though. The new form of Eggling we were researching, they were the ones who did this . . ." he said as he looked around again, as if hearing something that Anubis and Shadow couldn't hear. "Th-th-they thrive on the darkness," he stuttered as a large pair of claws inched out of the darkness behind him. Shadow threw his arm forward, trying to save the soldier. "They hunt at night." said the soldier finally, before the claws dug into his shoulder and dragged him backwards into the darkness.

Anubis shaped his bandages into a drill-like shape and he plunged them into the darkness. The jackal's attack hit nothing and another clawed hand appeared behind him. Shadow turned around just in time and aimed his palm at the shadow creature.

"Chaos Spear!" yelled Shadow as a large bolt of energy erupted from his hand.

Anubis quickly got the message and got down, Shadow's attack smashing into nothing but the brick wall behind Anubis.

"They're fast." said Anubis as his bandages formed blades.

"No, they're annoying." snarled Shadow angrily as he looked around rapidly, trying to find the creatures that were preying on them both.

The two of them looked around, the sounds of the creatures scurrying through the darkness sounding around them. Occasionally, Shadow fired a Chaos Spear into the dark, hoping that it would hit something, while Anubis just continued to scan the area occasionally slashing his bandage-blades into the dark. A clawed hand shot out of the darkness and reached for the back of Shadow's head, but was stopped as one of Anubis's bandages wrapped around its wrist. Shadow turned around to find Anubis dragging the creature out of the darkness so they could finally get a good look at it.

A loud ear piercing screech filled the air as the creature thrashed about. It had long, spindly arms, which were so skinny that they looked like they were nothing but bones. Its body was skinny and looked as if it hadn't eaten in days. Its long claws seemed very jagged and blood encrusted that it seemed to shine with a crimson glow in the street lamp's light. Shadow looked into the thrashing Noct Eggling's eyes and he could see that it wasn't used to the light. Anubis wrapped his other bandage around the creature's throat and snapped the Eggling's neck easily. The jackal then released the Eggling from his grasp and looked around as the rest of the creatures continued to circle the two.

"We're going to need some more light." said Anubis calmly as Shadow shot another Chaos Spear into the darkness. "There's a main generator here, you stay here, and I'll go switch it on." he said, before running off into the dark.

Before Shadow could protest against Anubis's plan, the jackal was gone, leaving the hedgehog alone standing in the middle marketplace's plaza. One of the Eggling's charged out of the darkness, swiping its claws frantically. The hedgehog jumped to the side before the creature ran into the darkness once again. Shadow stood straight up, an angry scowl on his face. He raised both of his hands so his right palm was facing his right and his left palm was facing his left.

"Chaos Spear!" he yelled, as a bolt of Chaos Energy leapt out of his hands and shot into the dark.

The dying screech coming from two Egglings filled the air and Shadow smirked, knowing that he was finally getting used to hunting the abominations. Shadow then leapt through the air, firing blast after blast into every direction, knowing that his attacks were hitting his intended targets.

More and more Noct Egglings were dying because of Shadow and the hedgehog felt good amongst the chaos. Shadow continued his rapid-fire Chaos Spears and he knew that he was lessening the Noct Eggling's number. But as he did so he could feel that he was starting to get surrounded by more and more Egglings and almost on cue, the streetlight he was fighting under flickered on and off. Shadow stopped his attack and looked up, to find that the glass bulb was starting to burn out.

"Fuck." cursed Shadow silently, before the streetlight went out, leaving Shadow standing in the darkness.

He could hear the Noct Egglings starting to come in closer and closer, until he could smell the blood that encrusted their fur. It was so dark, Shadow could barely see in front of his face, but he still kept calm. Out of the darkness, a claw slashed at him, cutting Shadow's arm. The hedgehog threw a punch to his side, but it hit nothing because the creature wasn't there anymore. Shadow tried to concentrate, but the horrible sounds that the beasts were emitting were horrible and annoying.

Another Eggling cut Shadow, then another, in a matter of seconds the attacks started to come at a more rapid pace. Shadow punched, kicked and blasted in every direction, but in the darkness, the Noct Eggling had the upper hand. In his mind, Shadow wondered when Anubis would finally turn the power on and some voice in his head told him that the jackal had just left him to die. The ebony hedgehog's eyes shot open, anger boiling in his ruby pupils. As the Egglings continued to cut and slice at him, he started to gather energy. His entire body started to emit a red glow and he started to grit his teeth as he gathered more energy.

"Chaos . . . ." he started. "Blast!"

A bright red light composed of Chaos Energy engulfed Shadow before growing into such great proportions that it engulfed the entire Noct Eggling mob around him. Most of them dissolved at the touch of the immense power and the other Egglings farther away from Shadow just burned to death. As the blast died down, it left Shadow kneeling in the darkness panting heavily. He could smell the burnt carcasses around him and he knew that he had killed the majority of them all. His hopes were crushed though as the sounds of more Egglings grew closer and he knew that there was at least ten or twelve Eggling's left. He could feel the Noct Egglings slowly start to surround him. Shadow was too tired to do anything about them and he hoped that Anubis was finally getting to the power box. One of the Noct Egglings raised its arm at Shadow and prepared to execute his prey.

There was a loud click and Shadow's entire vision was filled with a bright light. Shadow shielded his eyes from the light and the sound of distorted Eggling's filled the air. The Eggling's reeled in pain as the light burned their vision. Seconds later the Eggling scurried away and back into the darkness, leaving Shadow alone in the middle of the illuminated marketplace. Shadow looked around and found that Anubis was standing next to him.

"Come on," said Anubis as he extended a hand to help Shadow up. "Let's go before they come back with more friends." said the jackal before the hedgehog took his hand.

Shadow got to his feet and looked around, trying to remember where the military base was. "Yeah, we've got to go back to base, they need to know about this." said Shadow before hearing a sigh escape from Anubis's mouth.

The hedgehog turned to face the jackal to find that he looked sad. Shadow raised an eyebrow at the sight and wondered why he looked so glum.

"I can't go back with you. I have to go back to the Underground Shadow." he said before looking at Shadow with saddened eyes. "We're . . . . we're closing the Gates."

A shocked looked appeared on Shadow's face at the statement. The Gates were the doorway to the Underground and Shadow has been through them many times. Last time he was in the Underground, Anubis assured the hedgehog that the Gates would always stay open and the only reason why it would close was if something horrible was happening that would threaten the Underground's population. Then it hit Shadow. The new Eggling threat was scaring Anubis and Shadow knew that the jackal was very sensitive when it came to his people.

"Is that why you came with me?" asked Shadow in a surprised tone.

Anubis shrugged. "Yeah, I figured that you should know that your home away from home was closing its doors on you." he said normally, his saddened look gone already.

"But why are you closing the Gates?" asked Shadow. "Why don't you just help us fight this war?" he asked curiously.

"Shadow," Anubis sighed, amused that the hedgehog was showing some compassion towards him. "You of all people should know that Grimwalkers don't help other people. We are proud people, we never ask for help." he finished, knowing the Underground's motto.

The ebony hedgehog tried to find the right words to convince Anubis to keep the Gates open, but he knew that arguing with the jackal would be useless. Anubis walked forward and patted Shadow on the shoulder. "We'll open them again once you get that idiot friend of yours to save the world." he said before walking past Shadow and into the darkness.

Shadow stood there, alone once again. Anubis was the closest living person he had to a friend and now he was just going to shut his doors on the hedgehog. The ebony hedgehog didn't know what to feel and he found that fact funny because most of the time he didn't feel anything at all. He started walking toward the G.U.N. HQ, his emotions mixed up like some well-stirred soup. Then he realized something that fueled his determination to win. He had to win this fight if he wanted to go back to the Underground, back to the people who understood him the most.

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